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"LOVE of fashion brings our people together," Lord Mayor John So
said before a slick show of Italian students' designs in Melbourne
Town Hall ballroom.

"Fashion is first of all about art, culture and creativity,"
answered Giovanni Bozzetti, reminding us all  despite
evidence to the contrary  that fashion is about more than
fluff, frocks and pretty models.

Mr Bozzetti is the commissioner for fashion, tourism, special
events and international relations in Milan, Melbourne's sister
city, which reaps 30 billion ($A49 billion) a year from its
fashion industry.

This week he warned that good fashion everywhere is under
threat. Its front line of defence against plagiarists and cheap
imports is: "Quality, and the creativity of the young. This the
Chinese cannot copy well."

With a remarkable collection of 40 designs by students from one
of Milan's 14 fashion schools, Instituto Marangoni, he pretty much
proved his point. In the ebb and flow and flutter of expensive silk
(Mr Bozzetti said his government supported the students' fabric
purchases) was a sophisticated understanding of fabric weight and
drape unusual for designers so young.

One memorable group in dark pudding colours skimmed the model's
curves with complicated tailoring and pleating, then released into
ragged tendrils of mousseline silk that waved like kelp under
water. Another group used jet-black human-like hair, kinked and
draped in metre-long hanks.

Several designs rendered the models virtually topless as their
bodice panels and straps slid elegantly off in ways that could only
be deliberate.

At Flemington at the same time, the Victoria Racing Club and
Myer were presenting a more modest kind of frock to 800 lunching
ladies. The season's first multi-label racewear show was a prelude
to Myer's free public shows from today. So far, the checklist for
the slavishly fashionable includes picture hats with brims broad as
umbrellas, cocktail fascinators and spotted, floral and empire-line
frocks with full rippled skirts and knee-skimmer hemlines.